A jagged bolt strikes down from the clouds.
Bible in art · 2 Kings
Elijah Calls Down Fire on Ahaziah's Captains
Gustave Doré · 1866 (designs for La Sainte Bible, Tours); this printing 1873–1874
National Library of Poland, Warsaw
Doré loved storms, and here he gives the wood engraver almost nothing but cloud and darkness to cut. The plate was made for the Tours Bible of 1866.
From a black sky a jagged bolt strikes into the middle of the company. Horses rear and riders tumble to the ground, lit for an instant by the flash. Far off, on the hilltop, a small dark figure stands with one arm raised — Elijah.
From the text
- Elijah “was sitting on top of a hill” (2 Kings 1:9)
- “fire came down from heaven and consumed the captain and his fifty men” (2 Kings 1:10)
- The king sent another captain with fifty men (2 Kings 1:11)
The artist’s own
- The fire drawn as lightning from storm clouds
- The soldiers on horseback
- Elijah standing, tiny in the distance — the text has him sitting
Details
The lightning
Elijah
A small dark figure stands on the hill with an arm raised.
The soldiers
Riders and horses tumble to the ground in the flash.
A rearing horse
A white horse rears up in terror.
Gustave Doré, French, 1832–1883. National Library of Poland (Biblioteka Narodowa), Warsaw — «Pismo Święte Starego i Nowego Testamentu», vol. 1, Warsaw: M. Glücksberg, 1873 (acc. 75.267 A), tabl. 101 · Wood engraving after Gustave Doré’s design · National Library of Poland (Polona): the record of the volume gives the licence «Domena Publiczna» (Public Domain), «copyrightProtected»: false; the scan was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by the library itself («Polona Upload», GLAM-Wiki partnership: “This file was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as part of a GLAM-Wiki partnership between the National Library of Poland and Wikimedia Polska”), linking its Polona record.